by Jim Markson
There were, however, still forty miles to go before Mike got to Marco Island, gatekeeper of the Ten Thousand Islands. It was a quiet and sober stretch of sailing. The little boat loved being outside the Intercoastal and plugged along at a steady three knots. The waves were rolling in toward the beach, several hundred yards to the east, and she slid up one side and down the other with the knowing confidence of a skilled craftsman. She loved being salty, and she loved doing her job. She would bring Mike wherever he wanted to go and, while she might not like the heading, it was not her job to set the course. She would go where he wanted, content in performing her duties, determined to keep her master on the proper side of the waterline.
Mike reflected on the developments of recent days. The trip was no longer appealing; he had crashed into potential doom as hard as he could, and somehow he was alive and still sailing south. He thought about giving up on the challenge, beaching the boat and doing something else. But his imagination was impaired, and any land he could conjure up was suffocated by a permanent tropical depression, gray and warm, with feeble threats of a real hurricane.
Besides, he could not help but feel some of the joy the little boat was having as she plied the waves. He thought about the prior evening and his headlong rush into the dark channel in the middle of a thunderstorm. “Thought it was the end … but you handled it all by yourself,” he said to the boat.
“You do not know the day nor the hour,” the little boat responded gently. Or maybe it was the waves.
Mike nodded in agreement; the boat was right. You played the cards you were dealt as best you could. He had learned a little bit over the years and, while he knew he would never approach a full understanding, there had been times when he thought he had caught a glimpse into why he was here and what he was supposed to do.
But he was tired and weary, he explained to the boat. Some days his chest felt like an anchor pulling him into a ground made of thick mud. His bones and muscles grew more exhausted with every click of the secondhand, but when he laid down, he could find no sleep, no rest. Surely there must be an end to the misery? he asked. “Gird your loins,” whispered the boat, “be not crushed as if I would leave you.”
Mike took heed of the encouragement, but observed that the wrong always seemed to outweigh the right; the good faded and the bad thrived. What was the point, he asked, if it doesn’t make any difference? “You don’t know what difference it makes,” the boat responded. “What is too sublime for you, seek not. Into things that are beyond your strength, search not. Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”
Mike pulled out one of the gallon jugs of water and drank thirstily. He opened up the smoked fish and ate it slowly, thinking that it tasted particularly good. He estimated the sun would be setting in an hour, and he headed the boat east toward land. He landed softly on a beach in a wildlife preserve between Naples and Marco Island and set up a small fire and prepared an MRE. He pulled up the center plank of the boat and lay down in his sleeping bag. He pined for some hooch, but couldn’t deny a vague sense of betterment for being without it. He slept long and well.
XII
The weather was fair and the wind was firm when Mike woke up the next morning. He had rounded Marco Island by 10:00 am and started sailing southeasterly, trying to stay in the margin that separated Ten Thousand Islands from the Gulf. But the area was a navigational nightmare under the best of circumstances, and Mike was not in the best of circumstances. The expensive GPS system he had bought before the trip had been lost to the bottom of Tampa Bay on the first evening. It wasn’t a big deal when all you had to do was keep the mainland on your left and the barrier islands on your right, but, as the name implied, there was no mainland down here, just islands that were really patches of mangroves, and they all looked the same. There were occasional channel markers, but the event sponsors had gone to great lengths to warn that they could not be trusted. Every channel and so-called “island” changed with each passing storm, and there was no passing traffic that was going to come to your rescue if you were in trouble.
The next checkpoint was at Everglades City, a forsaken village buried at the bottom of the everglades whose primary source of income was derived from locals escorting illegal shipments of marijuana and cocaine. The methods were constrained only by imagination; some used airboats to pick up packages dropped by low-flying airplanes, others met mother ships out in the Gulf and then brought the goods in after the end of a genuine fishing trip. It was rumored that there were even small submarines delivering merchandise to the local runners.
Mike would have skipped the checkpoint altogether, but he knew he would be lucky if he still had any water left by the time he got to that point. It would be the only time he planned on penetrating the maze of islands, and the four-mile route through the mangrove islands was as challenging as anything he would do during the trip. First, however, he had to put twenty more miles under his belt to get to the point where he hoped to find the channel that led into the checkpoint.
As soon as he turned to the southeast, the wind died. He took the opportunity to drink as much water as he could and once again unzipped his dry suit as low as it would go. He ate a granola bar, and the crunching sound echoed across the flat milky-brown water. He stopped chewing and listened. So this is what silence sounds like, he thought. In all his years, he had never heard such a complete absence of sound. He looked behind him and then slowly in all directions. There was not a single thing moving. No rigging from his boat jangling with the waves or wind, no birds flying, no fish jumping, no waves rolling … not even a ripple. He thought he could actually hear his heart thumping blood through his body just below the sound of his own breathing. Certainly is different, he thought as he renewed the cacophony caused by his teeth meeting with the hard granola.
He fastened the sail and then tied the old bandana around his forehead. He put on his gloves and looked at the cheap straw tourist hat he had bought a few days ago, smiling both with amusement and affection. He put the hat on his head and the oars in their locks, and started to row. The air was warm and stale, and the sun was hot, but he rowed all day. He stopped regularly and forced himself to drink as much water as he could hold, and evacuate what he had already consumed into his bucket. At each interval, he took out his charts and tried to figure out where he was. He estimated his speed at two knots, and there didn’t appear to be any current other than the constant ebb and flow of the tides into the mangroves. His estimations were little more than guess work, but it made him feel more comfortable, and he was aware it was the most thought he had put into the trip thus far. Aside from these breaks, his mind was clear of thoughts. He rowed, and he looked around at everything and nothing. He tied up to one of the mangrove islands before sunset and, despite the grueling work, felt stronger than when he had started.
He worried about snakes coming from the darkness of the mangroves, but he could not figure any feasible defense. The MRE he pulled out for the night meal was spaghetti and meatballs and, once again, he savored the taste. While he hated to pollute, he feared the smell of the remnants in the cooking bags might attract unwanted visitors and was tempted to simply toss them into the water for the tide to take away. In the end however, he decided to rinse them out with salt water and stow them under the forward plank. He told himself he had done all he could and laid down in the boat. For the second night in row, he slept well.
He woke on the sixth morning of the challenge to the sound of birds in the mangroves. The sun had broken the horizon, and the sky was quickly changing to the clear light blue of Florida in March. He ate two granola bars and drank as much water as he could hold, looking around with eyes that seemed to see better and a head that seemed less clouded with the clutter of the past and the future.
Once again, there was no wind, and he rowed without complaint. By 1100 hours he estimated he must have rowed past the entry to Indian Key Pass, the channel into Everglades City. He wished he could skip ente
ring into the maze of islands entirely, but he was down to only a quarter gallon of water. He turned the boat around, headed northwest, and rowed for two more hours, looking for the markers that would guide the way to Everglades City. The mangrove islands defied perception. Consisting of the exact same type of foundation and vegetation, it was impossible to tell where one ended and the next started; it was like a mouse trying to see a barn from the other side of a cornfield. Mike hoped the fish at the bottom of Tampa Bay were enjoying knowing where they were with his GPS.
By 1400 hours he was out of water and had not seen anything that looked like a channel marker. Perhaps he had turned around too early the first time. He turned the boat around again, heading back to the southeast, but this time, he moved closer to the islands, hoping to be able to see past the first layer of islands and discern his path. His eyes felt strong, but the flat water meant there was no relief from the reflective light regardless which direction he looked. He began to feel pain from a location he could only describe as behind his eyeballs, a type of pain that he had never felt before. Now, when he most needed to see, the only relief came from closing his eyes.
As he rowed closer, the islands became more distinct, but the many channels between them all looked the same. Some were slightly wider, some seemed to go straight for a little while, but nowhere could he find the channel marker placed by the Army Corp of Engineers. Mike took the charts out for the fourth time that day and studied the shape of the two islands marking the entrance of Indian Key Pass, the head of the channel leading to Everglades City. They were both sufficiently narrow that they might be discernible, and Indian Key itself was marked as an actual land mass rather than a mangrove. It was also one of the few places where the water leading into the maze of islands held a depth of more than ten feet and, even in the waning sun, he might be able to detect the change in the color of the water marking the channel.
Mike continued to row southeast, looking for a land mass that might be Indian Key, or any other type of landmark that would help him figure out how to get to Everglades City. While his eyes alternated looking for a landmark and closing to relieve the pain caused from the sun glare, his mind was assessing the overall situation. He was out of water, the sun was going down, he had made almost no progress during the course of the day, his eyes were failing, and he was not sure where he was. While only a few nights ago, the thought of blasting his way into a watery death had seemed a desirable solution, he did not welcome the thought of withering under the Florida sun, literally rowing himself to death.
Just before sunset, he tied up to one of the mangroves. He was no longer worried about the snakes or crocodiles—he needed water. He prepared an MRE and forced himself to eat half of it before he laid down. He pulled his sleeping bag over his head, hoping for protection from the no-see-ums, and his eyes rejoiced in relief as he closed them in the dark. He went to sleep hoping his plan would bring salvation the following morning.
The sun rose on the seventh morning and woke Mike to the same suffocating stillness he had known since entering the Ten Thousand Islands. The prior afternoon he had suppressed reservations regarding his location and reassured himself that he absolutely had to be somewhere between Fakahatchee Pass and Rabbit Key Pass. He still had his compass and, despite the maze of islands in between, if he could row, or even drag or push his boat four miles northeast, he should be able to enter the more open waters of Chokolosee Bay, which would provide easier navigation to Everglades City and much-needed water.
After untying from the mangroves, he headed southeast and, within an hour, had selected a channel that seemed broad and headed north. He rowed for another hour before the channel turned into a dead end. He rowed halfway back out the channel and took a smaller passage heading northwest. It opened up into a small lagoon and, once again consulting his compass, headed northeast. He picked one of the channels out of the lagoon and rowed until the channel narrowed to the point that he could no longer stroke the oars.
With his beach booties on his feet, he got out of the boat and pulled her through the channel, which eventually opened up to a mud flat. Even without him in the boat, it stuck in the heavy mud, and pulling it forward took all of Mike’s reserves. He leaned forward and pulled, the tow rope cutting into his shoulder and his own feet sinking into the mud. One step at a time, always leaning forward, he made it fifty yards over the mud flat to find deeper water.
His right thigh cramped hard as he pulled himself back into the boat, and it was all he could do to straighten the leg and breathe deeply as the boat floated on the flat water. He was in dire need of fresh water, and as he surveyed his surroundings, he prayed that he had made it into Chokolosee Bay. To the northwest he thought he could see a dock and a boat ramp, and he talked his leg into cooperating as he broke out the oars and started rowing. He rowed with his back to his intended destination, looking over his shoulder to make sure he was on the proper course. But when he finally stopped and turned all the way around, he could no longer see anything that resembled a dock, a boat ramp, or any form of man-made structure.
Mike stood up in the boat to gain a better perspective and immediately felt light-headed. He fought through the dizziness and surveyed the north end of the lagoon. He could see where it appeared to end, and there was nothing to give him any hope that Everglades City was in that direction. Toward the southwest, however, the lagoon seemed to extend beyond his limited field of vision, and he was sure salvation lay in that direction. Within minutes, the muscles in his back, those that had been so reliably pulling the oars, began to cramp into twisted knots, requiring Mike to let go of the oars and cross his arms in front of himself to try to stretch them out.
The sun continued to slowly broil him, but his perspiration grew less and less. He rowed southeast, paralleling the projected shore of Chokolosee Bay, stopping more and more frequently to address the cramping from his back and legs. He stopped looking over his shoulder to see what was coming next, but kept his eyes on the weedy shoreline to his right, hoping to see some sign of civilization.
It was mid-day when Mike detected something different in the environment. He dropped the oars and stretched his back, which was now a single burning knot of cramping pain that no amount of stretching could relieve. He listened but still heard nothing. Then he felt it, a ripple in the glass surface of the lagoon. He cocked his head and could feel it … a breeze. Ever so slight, but still a breeze. He took a heavy breath and begged his back and arms and legs to help him turn around to survey what lay in front of him.
He dared not try to stand up, but lifted one leg and then the other over the plank he was sitting on and looked over the bow of the boat at the direction he was heading. His heart sank as he realized he had rowed to the lagoon’s end and, because he had been rowing with the shoreline as his guide, he was now no longer headed southeast. He took out his compass and sighed as it confirmed he had hooked around with the end of the lagoon and was headed southwest. He had searched the entire northeastern shore of the lagoon and there had been no sign of civilization. He was not in Chokolosee Bay; he had no idea where he was.
Refusing to give up, he thought about looking at his charts but realized it would be a waste of time; they could only help you get to where you were going if you already knew where you were. He picked his head up out of his hands and surveyed the western edge of the lagoon, a mangrove forest headed north for as far as he could see. He looked straight ahead again and thought he saw something shining from within the mangroves, shimmering almost. He had been closing his eyes more as he rowed the past several hours and assumed it was a mirage, like the dock and boat ramp he had seen earlier in the day.
There was not enough wind to push the boat, but neither had Mike reached the point of surrender. Without thought, he returned to the rowing position, took up the oars, and pushed the boat toward the shimmering light. An hour later, he reached the western edge of the lagoon and realized that the light had been reflections off waves on the other side of the thin mangrov
e barrier. There was wind just beyond the mangroves and, as he looked up, he noticed rain clouds in the sky. The thought of fresh water falling from the sky, soothing his burnt skin and blistered hands, falling freely into his open mouth, provided renewed hope and strength.
He looked through the mangrove, a thick web of branches and slippery roots that he estimated was fifty yards deep. He looked to the north and wondered how far it would be till he found a break that would allow him to row or sail the boat back into open water. More than anything, he wanted to be outside of the suffocating confines of the lagoon and the shallow webbed prison it presented. He slowly got out of the boat and into water that was a foot deep. He looked at the boat, and he looked at the mangroves. He asked the boat if his plan was possible, but she wasn’t answering.
It was low tide, and he walked into the mangrove, balancing on the slippery roots that were now above water. He pulled on a rope connected to the bow of the boat, but he didn’t have the strength to pull her up on the roots with him. He pulled part of the bow up on the roots and tied the rope to a branch, slowly making his way to the back of the boat. He knew his strength was limited and his first push would likely be his best. With every muscle in his body curling up into a ball from lack of water, he knelt down, got his forearms under the boat, and pushed her up onto the roots of the mangrove trees. Once up on the wet roots, she slid forward, and he fell in the same direction, unable to get his arms up in a defensive position as he nose-dived into the roots.
He picked himself up and walked back to the front of the boat, putting the bowline over his shoulder and pulling the boat through the mangrove one careful foot at a time. It was a sense of cold that caused him to realize a soft rain had begun to fall and the water was making its way through the heavy canopy overhead. He rested for a minute, now able to clearly see the open water, the raindrops falling softly on water stirred with a strong breeze. He knew the coldness was not a good sign, that his body might be on the verge of a final shutdown, but the cool water felt so good on his burnt and salty skin.